‘Injustice to other eligible meritorious students’: IIMA opposes PIL in HC seeking reservation in PhD

The PIL was filed by Anil Wagde for the Global IIM Alumni Network, an association of IIM graduates, in 2021.

According to the PIL, not providing reserved seats in the PhD programme, which commenced in IIMA in 1971, is a “gross violation of constitutional provisions,” as well as violation of Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act and University Grants Commission’s guidelines. It said that at least 15 of the 20 IIMs in the country offer reserved seats in similar programmes.

With the last date for online application for the doctoral programme for the academic year 2023 being January 17, the matter was briefly taken up by a division bench of Chief Justice Aravind Kumar and Justice AJ Shastri on Monday. The petitioner sought a stay on the admission process. The bench, however, refused to grant any interim relief on the ground that the matter had been admitted and a notice was issued to the respondents in August 2022.

The bench, however, granted liberty to the petitioner to file a fresh application after the court resumes post summer vacation in June.

In an affidavit filed by the institute in November 2022, Colonel Amit Verma, chief administrative officer of IIMA, submitted that the institute has reservation policy for programmes such as MBA, PGPM etc, which in itself are specialised programmes. “PhD is a high-level specialisation programme in a particular branch of management, admitting students who have a strong academic background and who have the intellectual curiosity to undertake original research,” the affidavit said.

“Neither the Constitution of India nor any other law envisages reservation for courses/programmes at high levels of specialisation. Even the candidates from reserved category, by the time they reach the stage of applying for programmes such as PhD/FPM, would have had the benefit of reservation policy in education at the graduation and postgraduate levels. Therefore, the law does not mandate any further reservation for such high-level specialisation programmes,” IIMA said in the affidavit.

It added that there are no fixed number of seats for its PhD programme unlike regular courses. “IIMA admits a small number of students, ranging between 12 to 27 per year (for PhD) and thus, it is an impossibility to provide for reservation of fixed seats for any category of social strata,” the IIMA added.

“In these peculiar circumstances when the suitable students for PhD programmes are hardly 2 or 3, it is also not practically possible to provide reservation,” the affidavit notes.

IIM-A further submitted that reservation in the doctoral programme “could be counterproductive and might also lead to injustice to other eligible meritorious students” and that for a high-level specialised course such as PhD, “it is in the larger public interest that reservation is not provided.”

The affidavit also contended that IIMs are “independent and autonomous,” governed by their Board of Governors, with each IIM having its own policies and procedure of imparting high level education.